y admires. He
is at his most humorous in writing of Mr. Pickwick, who represents
passive virtue. He is at his most humorous in writing of Mr. Sam
Weller, who represents active virtue. He is never so funny as when he is
speaking of people in whom fun itself is a virtue, like the poor people
in the Fleet or the Marshalsea. And in the stories that had immediately
preceded _Martin Chuzzlewit_ he had consistently concerned himself in
the majority of cases with the study of such genial and honourable
eccentrics; if they are lunatics they are amiable lunatics. In the last
important novel before _Martin Chuzzlewit_, _Barnaby Rudge_, the hero
himself is an amiable lunatic. In the novel before that, _The Old
Curiosity Shop_, the two comic figures, Dick Swiveller and the
Marchioness, are not only the most really entertaining, but also the
most really sympathetic characters in the book. Before that came _Oliver
Twist_ (which is, I have said, an exception), and before that
_Pickwick_, where the hero is, as Mr. Weller says, "an angel in
gaiters." Hitherto, then, on the whole, the central Dickens character
had been the man who gave to the poor many things, gold and wine and
feasting and good advice; but among other things gave them a good laugh
at himself. The jolly old English merchant of the Pickwick type was
popular on both counts. People liked to see him throw his money in the
gutter. They also liked to see him throw himself there occasionally. In
both acts they recognised a common quality of virtue.

Now I think it is certainly the disadvantage of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ that
none of its absurd characters are thus sympathetic. There are in the
book two celebrated characters who are both especially exuberant and
amusing even for Dickens, and who are both especially heartless and
abominable even for Dickens--I mean of course Mr. Pecksniff on the one
hand and Mrs. Gamp on the other. The humour of both of them is
gigantesque. Nobody will ever forget the first time he read the words
"Now I should be very glad to see Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg."
It is like remembering first love: there is still some sort of ancient
sweetness and sting. I am afraid that, in spite of many criticisms to
the contrary, I am still unable to take Mr. Pecksniff's hypocrisy
seriously. He does not seem to me so much a hypocrite as a rhetorician;
he reminds me of Serjeant Buzfuz. A very capable critic, Mr. Noyes, said
that I was wrong when I suggested in ano